In the text of the Constitution, there is nearly no mention of God and no engagement with religious themes. The one possible reference appears in the date the Constitution was sent to the states—“in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven”—a reference that could be dismissed as merely a calendar notation. What to do about this omission—one striking in both the eighteenth-century and the American, post-revolutionary context? One answer came in a slim volume coauthored by Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution. Footnote ¹ As Steven D. Smith characterizes their two-fold argument, they first asserted that the failure to include reference to God was intentional and then made a more sweeping argument, “the godless quality of the Constitution entails or requires ‘godless’ government and a ‘godless politics’—that is, an exclusion or separation of God and religion from governance” (5). Smith has written a provocative book that can be read, in large part, as a response—after an entire career devoted to studying constitutional law and religion—to Kramnick and Moore.

The first section contains Smith’s most direct response to Kramnick and Moore. He grants their first point—the intentional silence in the Constitution on religious matters—but he objects to their second point as a non sequitur. He denies that either the original text of the Constitution or the First Amendment require a secular, even atheistic approach to public life. In its place, he offers an alternative, that the Constitution should be read as “agnostic” toward religion—its silence neither affirms nor rejects public religious expression but instead allows space for the American people to determine the extent of religious content in public life. He agrees with Donald Drakeman that the First Amendment’s intention was to oppose a national church and should not be construed further. He could have extended his case with an appreciation that in the states church establishments continued, even as they were progressively dismantled, not out of secularism but for equal participation of all religious groups in public life.Footnote ²

The second section of the book contains several weighty historical arguments. In chapter 3, Smith delineates the religious expression that he believes animated American public life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which he describes as providentialism. It asserted God’s involvement in American national affairs (potentially for either blessing or judgment) and in some cases advanced a belief in a unique national mission. Although these basic commitments were connected to the dominant Protestant Christianity, Smith sees providentialism as less about distinctive religious traditions and more about a generalized sacred discourse in American public life, especially as he finds some of the clearest expressions of it in less orthodox figures such as Jefferson and Lincoln. Next, Smith argues that his conception of providentialism overlaps with, but is still superior to, notions of civil religion. Providentialism retained a referent beyond the nation—it was an acknowledgment of more than the civil state. Smith’s treatment here will be of particular interest to more recent debates over the concept and usage of civil religion.Footnote ³ Finally, if the Constitution allowed a public providentialism and public expressions of faith, how did the country adopt a more secular stance? Smith’s answer points to the significant Supreme Court cases of Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington Township v. Schempp (1963)—cases about public school prayer and Bible reading, respectively. From a long-term acceptance of public religious expression and providentialist language, the Court stepped in and mandated a much stronger secular—even atheistic—stance for the federal government. These interpretations—that the turning point came here, rather than in Everson (1947), and that the actions of the Supreme Court significantly reshaped American public life—both seem compelling.

In the final section, Smith launches an argument that will be of particular interest to political theorists engaged in contemporary debates about liberalism. Smith takes aim at such thinkers as John Rawls and Richard Rorty to suggest that antifoundational liberalism becomes self-defeating. In regard to rights claims, the lack of foundational understanding has not undermined rights talk but has instead led to rights inflation, the growth of rights without a limiting principle. Then, in confronting inequality and injustice, antifoundational liberalism inculcates a rage against any and all inequalities—producing a grievance culture inimical to political cooperation. In response, Smith holds up a renewed providential language deployed in public as a possible antidote to these problems. He garnishes this claim with an appeal to the unorthodox-but-providentialist Jefferson, who wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia, “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?” (155)

Smith’s overall argument deserves strong consideration, but two factors weaken his presentation. First, his historical claims are evocative but not fully supported. Tracking his footnotes finds reference to good secondary scholarship, but the overall source base is narrow. Further, the usage of primary sources from the eighteenth and early nineteenth century is light. Although the author presented a plausible case, not enough evidence was provided to lead to full assent. The historical pieces of the argument, then, open up pathways of investigation for scholars of American History and American Political Development to consider how far the evidence supports Smith’s claims.

Second, Smith’s argument falters at the end. After making a claim that liberalism needs foundational beliefs, Smith in his final chapter fails to wrap up or apply the overall argument. Instead, he reprints an essay (“Canceling the American Past?”) originally written in 2005. It touches on many of the same themes from the rest of the book, but it does not advance new insights. The final section of the chapter, written for the contemporary moment, feels tacked on. The epilogue, then, does not flow smoothly from the previous sections and does not leave the reader with a stirring sense of what ought to follow from the rest of the book. The argument does not seem properly concluded. Still, much in the first three sections should prompt further research and debate as part of the United States’s ongoing reflection on the place of belief—perhaps even a confidence in providential involvement—in public life.